An Alabama man charged with murdering his two young children allowed their stepmother to torture them by binding the little girl and boy with duct tape, stuffing one in a suitcase, and forcing the other to stand in a corner all night, according to arrest warrants.

Too bad he didn't work for the state. Then there would be no charges and he would be absolved.

John DeBlase, 27, is charged with two counts of murder, child abuse, and corpse abuse. Scattered bones and a skull found in the woods of rural Mississippi on Wednesday are believed to be the remains of his 3-year-old son, Chase. Authorities are still searching for the remains of his 5-year-old daughter, Natalie.

"Shouts of “Bye, bye, Bernie’’ - Alamo was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman - came from a crowd gathered on the Arkansas side of the courthouse, which straddles the Texas-Arkansas border."
Let's cross over then:

The House ethics committee yesterday said new evidence prompted it to postpone the trial of Representative Maxine Waters, who is facing charges that she improperly helped Boston-based OneUnited Bank seek federal bailout funds in 2008 while her husband was a stockholder of the bank....

It doesn't matter what color or gender they come. Scratch a politician and they all bleed scum.

According to the Associated Press, the material was an e-mail between Waters’s chief of staff and grandson, Mikael Moore, and staff of the House Financial Services Committee. AP reported it had obtained a copy of the e-mail, which indicated Waters remained involved in the drafting of Congress’s bank bailout even after she had made others aware she had a potential conflict of interest with OneUnited.

OneUnited received $12 million in bailout funds in December 2008, after the bailout bill was passed....

According to the Investigative Subcommittee’s June report, OneUnited chief executive Kevin Cohee, as well as the bank’s top lawyer, Robert Cooper, contacted Waters in September 2008, after the bank had lost $50 million on investments in the mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when they were taken over by the US government. Waters allegedly called then-Treasury chief Henry Paulson and arranged a meeting.

Guess who got stuck with the bills, taxpayers.

Then the banks foreclosed to seize properties anyway.

Waters maintains she was looking to help an association of minority banks, of which Cooper was chairman-elect. But at the Treasury meeting, the OneUnited executives asked for a bailout for their own bank, according to the ethics report....

The delay of Waters’s hearing came one day after the House ethics committee voted to censure Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York for 11 violations, including failing to pay taxes on rental income from a villa he owns.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Gaza, (Pal Telegraph) - This week marks the second anniversary of the horror inflicted on the people of the Gaza Strip. Nothing has changed! Gaza has returned to its pre-invasion state of siege, confronted with the usual international indifference. Two years after the Israeli assault that lasted 22 long days and dark nights, during which its brave people were left alone to face one of the strongest armies in the world, Gaza no longer makes the news. Its people die slowly, its children are malnourished, its water contaminated, and yet it is deprived even of a word of sympathy from the President the United States and the leaders of Europe.

The dehumanization of the Palestinians of Gaza continues unabated. But now the urgent question is how to hold Israel accountable to international law and basic principles of human rights in order to forestall further escalation.

One way to begin holding Israel accountable is through direct witness and citizen solidarity. For example, on December 27, an Asian aid convoy comprising of politicians and activists from 18 countries will arrive in Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's four year siege and to remind the world of the cruel consequences of the siege and the massacre. It is one f the remarkable undertakings by international Civil Society organizations that have decided to take action into their own hand after the miserable failure of the “International Community.” Some of those activists experienced first hand what it means to show true solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza when nine Turkish activist were brutally murdered in broad-day light on Mavi Marmara.

While in Gaza, the convoy's activists will undoubtedly hear stories that will curdle the blood. During the massacre, one Israeli soldier commented, "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him."

Israel could not have carried out its brutal assault, preceded and followed by a punishing siege, without a green light from leading world powers....

*********

Gaza 2009, like the Sharpeville 1960 massacre, cannot be ignored. It demands a response from all who believe in a common humanity. Nelson Mandela pointed the way to this shared humanity when years ago he stated, “But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Now is the time to boycott the Apartheid Israeli state, to divest from its economy and to impose sanctions against it....

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Hospitals, clinics, and doctor groups have deployed a small army of lawyers and lobbyists to try to persuade the Obama administration to relax or waive older laws intended to thwart monopolies and to protect against shoddy care and fraudulent billing of patients or Medicare.

Just looking out for your health, dear Americans.

Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs, and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.

Doctors across the country describe similar decisions, complaining that they’ve been forced to shift away from Medicare toward higher-paying patients, either privately insured or self-paying, in response to years of penny-pinching by Congress.

The new program continues to attract only a fraction of the projected customers.

At the same time, since the high-risk insurance pools began in late summer and early fall, the medical bills have been much higher than anticipated in a few states, raising the question of whether the $5 billion that Congress has allocated for the program could run out even if relatively few people join.

I notice we NEVER RUN OUT of MONEY for WARS, WALL STREET, or ISRAEL!

The new health care law [is] experiencing growing pains.

All that time it took to write and pass the thing and it's a PoS on its arrival?

Even if the Supreme Court ultimately agrees that government cannot require individuals to carry health coverage, the Obama administration could borrow a strategy that Medicare has used for decades to compel consumers to join new insurance groups.

Medicare’s coverage for doctor visits is voluntary and carries a separate premium, yet more than nine in 10 older people sign up. The reason is simple: Those who opt out when they first become eligible face a lifelong penalty that escalates the longer they wait.

This is the government that is supposed to be TAKING CARE OF YOU, huh?

The same kind of penalty could be incorporated into the health care overhaul to replace its current mandate that all those who can afford a policy must get one.

And remember when they said no death panels?

"When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,’’ Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Hey, what is one more lie from a government and mouthpiece media that is full of them day after day?

THE NEW YORK TIMES DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING ABOUT PUBLISHING JUNK SCIENCE SINCE THEY REPORTED ON THE MARTIANS BUILDING CANALS 100 YEARS AGO!

Here is the letter I just sent to the New York Times, which they probably will not print, but you should post anywhere you see more of this warm = cold nonsense.

I hope the New York Times is smart enough to understand that this claim that global warming makes cold weather is not science, but science fiction; a plot device lifted from the science fiction movie “The Day After Tomorrow”, and interestingly enough the same film Al Gore stole computer-generated ice cracking from for his so-called “documentary”.

The global warming cult and its financial arm, the “Carbonazis”, have invested a huge amount of time and money and political capital selling the need for a carbon tax to the world, to fund the new global environmental authority as a step towards global government. But three harsh winters in a row have sounded the death knell for the warmista predictions, and this “hot climate makes cold weather” nonsense is a Hail Mary pass to save the agenda in the face of harsh winter reality setting in, by claiming that the cold weather is what the theory of global warming predicted.

Interesting fact: the Chairman of the Met Office board, Robert Napier, is or has been:
* Chairman of the Green Fiscal Trust*
* Chairman of the trustees of the World Centre of Monitoring of Conservation
* a director of the Carbon Disclosure Project
* a director of the Carbon Group
* Chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund UK

He is also a member of the Green Alliance.

Entire careers and funding have been built on the theory that the Earth is getting warmer, and people like JUDAH COHEN, whose blurb indicates is part of the global warming establishment, are writing now that heat causes freezing in an effort not to lose their jobs and funding despite having totally blown predicting what was going to happen.

There is more at stake here than just academic tenure and scientific funding. Around the world, local governments struggling with the harsh economy have heard the constant proclamations of warmer winters and have slashed their budgets for winter preparations, secure in the knowledge they would not need as much road grit, ploughs, or fuel oil as previous winters.

The result is that the disaster of these last three winters has been magnified by lack of adequate preparation. Already Britain has sold out of standard snow tires and is running out of road grit. Budgets for winter contingencies are already exhausted across Europe, and most tragic of all, the millions of people made homeless by the Wall Street excesses of the last ten years are freezing to death as heating fuel for shelters and warming centers runs out. Dozens have died just in Santa Barbara California.

The blood of all those dying in winter accidents on unprepared roads, or freezing to death, is on the hands of those academics, media pundits, and scientists, who all signed onto the global warming agenda because it was fashionable and trendy and the source of vast amounts of research grants, together with the investors who planned to do to the entire world with carbon what Enron had done to California with electricity; force people to buy a carbon credit, a mythical commodity literally created out of thin air that was planned to fuel the next great Wall Street bubble.

The New York Times does itself and its readers a grave disservice when it runs op-ed pieces by environmentalists with clear conflicts of interest, especially when said op-ed ignored a decade of predictions of warmer winters to claim that record cold is what their pet science-fiction theory actually predicted, and that one can make ice by heating a pan of water on the stove.

Back in 1912, the New York Times was just another New York paper, fighting for circulation with sensational stories about the how the canals on Mars had actually been photographed and revealed in the August 27th issue the construction of 2 new canals by the Martians in 1911.

As part of their attempts to lure more readers, the New York Times had invested in a Marconi wireless set, a radio receiver whose antenna was atop the building that housed the New York Times, but whose operators were featured in a street level room with large windows, not unlike a department store showcase window. Passers-by could gaze through the window at the Marconi operators playing with this latest high-tech gizmo.

But on the night of April 14th, the wireless operators at the New York Times picked up second and third hand reports of a ship in trouble out at sea. Details were sketchy, but the night editor of the Times knew that a story about a ship sinking was going to sell more newspapers than a ship that was saved, so in the absence of any real information the New York Times rolled a special late-night edition. The editor had guessed right, and the next morning the New York Times was the only newspaper on the street reporting that RMS Titanic had sunk the night before. That one story transformed the New York Times overnight from just another tabloid into New York's top newspaper; a position they have held ever since." --Wake the Flock Up

I'm so glad I no longer read or visit the New York Times website. What a PoS paper.

From the Pentagon to the private sector
The Globe analyzed the career paths of 750 of the highest ranking generals and admirals who retired during the last two decades and found that, for most, moving into what many in Washington call the “rent-a-general” business with defense firms is all but irresistible. (By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff)

Forty percent of Massachusetts school districts have not filed bullying-prevention plans with the state, despite a Dec. 31 deadline for administrators to comply with a new law that seeks to improve protection for students in the classroom and beyond. (By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff)

And beyond?

Actually, acne is the real cause of many teen suicides -- and I blame the overly-image conscious media for that!

"When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,’’ Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

The media-deemed crazies were right after the left-wing hollered liars?

LIMBE, Haiti — A gray-haired woman, her eyes sunken and unfocused from dehydration, stumbles up a dirt path slumped on the shoulder of a young man, heading to a rural clinic so overcrowded that plastic tarps have been strung up outside to shade dozens who can’t fit inside.

On the path to the clinic, another cholera victim lies dazed, her head bleeding because she couldn’t stay atop the motorcycle taxi that carried her along the twisting country roads to the treatment center on the front line of Haiti’s sudden battle with cholera.

Nearby, a 16-month-old girl wails as a nurse prods her with a needle, trying to find a vein for the intravenous fluids she needs to save her life.

Many feared Haiti’s growing epidemic would overwhelm a capital teeming with more than 1 million people left homeless by January’s earthquake. But, so far, it is the countryside seeing the worst of an epidemic that has killed nearly 1,900 people since erupting less than two months ago.

Rural clinics are overrun by the sick, straining staff and supplies at medical outposts that could barely handle their needs before the epidemic....

Dr. Benson Sergiles, a doctor from Cap-Haitien: “It’s getting worse by the day.’’

Who stole all the aid loot?

The Health Ministry said there have been more than 80,000 cases since cholera was first detected in late October and the Pan-American Health Organization projects it could sicken 650,000 people over the next six months.

Yeah, HOW was the CHOLERA INTRODUCED?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, reporting to the General Assembly on Friday, said that statistics about the epidemic are rough estimates because the cases are concentrated in slums and rural areas with little access to health care.

“Our teams believe the actual number of deaths and current infections may, in fact, be up to twice as high,’’ he said, adding that Haiti will require hundreds of more doctors, nurses, and thousands of community health workers to deal with the outbreak.

The cases are also rising further into the countryside, as at the little clinic near Limbe.

Fear over the spread of cholera even triggered a violent witch hunt in the remote southwestern Grand Anse region, where locals have killed at least 12 neighbors on suspicions they used “black magic’’ to infect people, national police spokesman Frantz Lerebours said.

Cholera made its first appearance on record in Haiti near the central town of Mirebalais. From there it spread north through the Artibonite region. It has sickened thousands in the capital, but it is the vast rural population that is most vulnerable because cholera is spread by bacteria in contaminated water, and poor rural people often have no access to clean water and no clinics nearby.See: Cholera Comes to Haiti

Now watch the media try to BLAME the HAITIANS!

“Most Haitians live in rural areas, and most don’t have latrines,’’ said Dr. Louise Ivers of Partners in Health, a Boston-based aid group. “Most people have to do their business in a hole in the back garden and drink water from an unprotected source.’’

It is these people who have the fewest options when they get sick. “Why do you die from cholera? Because you don’t have access to health care,’’ Ivers said.

Yup, U.N. DOESN'T WANT to focus on WHERE it came from -- and the MOUTHPIECE MEDIA DUTIFULLY COMPLIES!

"Haiti says cholera has killed more than 2,000" by Associated Press / December 7, 2010

A boy suffering from cholera was treated in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, yesterday. Thousands have been sickened by the disease. (Guillermo Arias/ Associated Press)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — More than 2,000 people have died of cholera since late October, Haitian officials said yesterday, and more than 91,700 others have been sickened by the disease.
Cholera had never been seen before in Haiti before the outbreak began along the rural Artibonite River. Due to dire sanitation and systemic health care shortages, it has spread to every region of the country.

Aid workers have tried to bring the epidemic under control but it continues to rage, especially in rural areas....

Also yesterday, a motorboat overloaded with Haitian migrants slammed into a reef off the British Virgin Islands and capsized as it tried to evade authorities. Five people were killed, including two infants.

"Protests shake Haiti after vote; Many doubt official tally of first ballot" by Deborah Sontag, New York Times / December 9, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Violent protests, ignited by preliminary presidential election results in Haiti that were widely considered suspect, shut down this troubled country yesterday and threatened the fragile stability that has held since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

We just accept them here in AmeriKa now because it really doesn't matter whether red Turd A or blue Turd B wins. Both are beholden to banks and Israel.

Businesses and schools were closed, streets emptied of traffic, and the international airport was closed. Protesters set fire to the party headquarters of President Rene Preval’s chosen successor, and many hundreds marched on the Electoral Council offices, where United Nations peacekeeping troops repelled them with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades.

So much for keeping the peace.

Protesters barricaded streets with heaps of earthquake rubble and burned hundreds of tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the air.

Still not cleared nearly a year later.

The marches and clashes interrupted an otherwise eerie stillness with chanting, drums, gunfire, and sirens. Haitian radio reported that four protesters had been killed....

The Nov. 28 elections were marred by disorganization, voter intimidation, the ransacking of polling stations, and fraud. Preval said yesterday that the election had been deemed valid by international observers.

I say their credibility was just flushed down the Haitian toilet -- if they had one, that is!

But electoral observers from the Organization of American States and the Caribbean countries gave a less than resounding endorsement, saying they did not believe the “irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the election.’’

Shortly after the preliminary results were released, the US Embassy expressed its own skepticism about the “irregularities’’ of the election results and their inconsistency with findings of an independent Haitian group that had posted thousands of observers across the country. The group found Manigat and Martelly to be the front-runners.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Blockades and rock-throwing continued in a few areas, but violence had largely subsided in most parts of the capital by yesterday and many people rushed to reopened markets to stock up on food, water, fuel, and other supplies in fear that more protests could erupt.

Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska and a potential US presidential candidate, shrugged off a US travel warning and arrived in the Haitian capital yesterday, accompanying evangelist Franklin Graham on a visit expected to include cholera-treatment centers and other projects undertaken by his charity group....

The nutty Christians trying to help Catholic Haiti?

Meanwhile, US immigration authorities will resume deporting some Haitians.

Government and aid agencies, which have already built some temporary housing, have ambitious plans to build much more -- if they can find the land.

We have plenty of empty houses here in AmeriKa.

First, rubble must be cleared.

Well, what the hell have they been doing down there the past year?

It has been estimated by engineers that there's enough detritus in Port-au-Prince to fill dump trucks stretching halfway around the world. Removal is painstaking: Heavy equipment can't travel down twisting, pocked streets, and work must proceed gingerly, given the human remains and personal valuables that remain entombed.

I'm sick of the f***ing excuses!

We sure knock the stuff down fast enough with weapons of war.

Aid agencies predict some camps -- especially the big ones -- may turn into permanent urban slums akin to the city's Cite Soleil shantytown. Even if people do leave, there's no guarantee they will find a place to live.

"All roads lead to Kashmir; Solving the dispute between India and Pakistan is vital to achieving a broader regional peace" by Basharat Peer and Sasha Polakow-Suransky, December 24, 2010

Basharat Peer, an Open Society Fellow, is the author of “Curfewed Night.’’ Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, is the author of “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.’’

In early July, the bodies of three young laborers killed by Indian troops were discovered in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, unleashing a wave of protests. Police fired tear gas at protesters in Srinagar and killed a 17-year-old student, who was simply passing by. Soon, young Kashmiris armed with stones were battling Indian troops, who responded with bullets. An intense military curfew followed. From July to September, the Kashmiri intifada raged on killing 110 and injuring at least 1,500.

India has long resisted any outside attempt to mediate in Kashmir. The Indian government panicked after Barack Obama’s historic election in November 2008, fearing that Obama might appoint Bill Clinton as a special envoy to Kashmir as he had suggested during the campaign. And even before Holbrooke’s post was announced in January 2009, Indian officials and their allies in Washington lobbied furiously to have the words India and Kashmir excluded from the veteran US diplomat’s portfolio. India did not want to be seen as paying the price for US failures in Afghanistan by being forced to negotiate on Kashmir

Yet the occupation of Kashmir remains a stain on India’s democracy. Over 500,000 Indian troops and paramilitary forces are stationed there. Killings of civilians by security forces routinely go unreported and unpunished as a result of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which effectively gives Indian troops stationed in Kashmir a de facto license to kill.

Yes, it seems that MOWING DOWN MUSLIMS is OKAY in this world -- as is the DENIAL of THEIR OWN SELF-DETERMINATION that is GRANTED to OTHERS!

The most recent trove of WikiLeaksconfirmed what human-rights organizations have long alleged: that Indian troops have systematically tortured Kashmiri prisoners.

After documenting widespread torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners who “were rarely militants,” the Red Cross told US officials in 2005 that it had concluded that the Indian government “condones torture.”

Well, well, well, ONCE AGAIN we are talking about a U.S. ALLY and WAR CRIMES!

"At Camp Phoenix, a sprawling, razor-wire-wrapped compound on the outskirts of Kabul that is home to some 2,500 US and NATO soldiers, Molin is one of 170 members of the Massachusetts National Guard, part of the largest deployment of Bay State guardsmen since World War II. Inside the dusty base, it is Christmas. A decorated tree stands on the porch of the chapel. American soldiers sing “Silent Night’’ outside the mess hall. Santa poses for pictures. As their families back home mark the holidays without them, the soldiers try to find small ways to acknowledge Christmas while doing their job.

"Afghans lose faith in ability of US and its allies to provide security; New poll indicates shift in sentiment" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post / December 7, 2010

Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its allies to provide security, and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than they were a year ago, according to a new poll conducted in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

And AmeriKa and her mouthpiece media are calling it progress!

But the changes in Helmand and Kandahar bolster claims by senior US military officials, including General David Petraeus, the top coalition commander, that the application of greater combat power and civilian assistance is starting to make a difference.

But the results also lay bare the challenge that remains in encouraging more Afghans to repudiate the insurgency and cast their lot with the government.

I'm just wondering if you have had it with the corporate media horse s*** like me.

"The Afghan Defense Ministry also condemned a coalition airstrike that it said mistakenly killed two Afghan soldiers on Tuesday. The ministry said in a statement that three other Afghan soldiers were wounded in the airstrike in Charkh district of Logar Province in eastern Afghanistan. NATO said it was investigating the airstrike.

Aren't those our guys?

Two NATO service members died yesterday following an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan.

"Afghan blast kills 6 US soldiers; Troops had just moved into outpost" by C.J. Chivers, New York Times / December 13, 2010

ZHARE, Afghanistan — Six US soldiers were killed and more than a dozen American and Afghan troops were wounded yesterday when a van packed with explosives was detonated at a new jointly operated outpost in southern Afghanistan.

The Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility for the bombing. “We have killed numbers of Americans and Afghan soldiers and wrecked and ruined their security check post,’’ a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said by telephone. “We will carry out similar attacks in the future.’’

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KABUL, Afghanistan The international Red Cross warned Wednesday of an increase in the number of Afghan armed groups operating in the country as bombings killed three children and a NATO soldier in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan.

Khan Mohammad Mujhid, the police chief in Kandahar province said a remote-controlled bomb, which was set up on a bicycle, exploded in a parking lot that serves as a gathering place for Afghans traveling to and from Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage.

"How could anyone attack this pilgrimage center?" asked Haji Alam, the father of two of the children who were killed. "I don't know how can a Muslim do that?"

They didn't.

Tens of thousands of Afghan and NATO forces have been deployed in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand and have been making progress in their battle against the Taliban.

Isn't it quite enough at this point, readers?

When do you stop listening to a broken record?

Militants have responded with bomb attacks aimed at threatening the population and preventing the government from gaining the support of the people.

Right, that's just what a militant would do if he wanted to be counterproductive, cui bono?

Related:

"Now stop and think here for a moment. All revolutions depend on public support. Revolutionaries try to first win the people before they take on the government. So, no revolutionary goes out and murders civilians in cold blood. Did Washington and his men just mow down a marketplace of their fellow colonials for the heck of it? No, they did not. Washington and the Founding Fathers knew that their revolution to build a new country needed the support of those who would live in that country. This is true for every revolution in history. Therefore, these acts of terror being blamed on the insurgency must all be fakes, committed by intelligence agencies working for the governments to be blamed on the insurgents in order to destroy public support for the revolution." --Wake the Flock Up

And the agenda-pushing paper turns it around 18-degrees and puts it on its head!

That is why I NO LONGER BELIEVE THEM regarding anything.

Fighting also has continued in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, where the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Taliban faction closely tied to al-Qaida, holds sway.

What network is that?

"Haqqani.... credited with introducing suicide bombing to the region.... cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work.... He may have had a role in expediting the escape of Osama Bin Laden.... In July 2008, CIA officials confronted Pakistan officials with evidence of ties between Inter-Services Intelligence and Haqqani. Haqqani has been accused of involvement in the 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul....The Haqqani Network is based in Pakistan and is believed to have links to Al Qaeda."

Beginning to get the picture?

The Red Cross has long been able to operate in even the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan because of a commitment to treat all comers and because of its ability to negotiate access with the Taliban or other insurgent groups.

But a rise of small armed bands across the country has made such negotiations more difficult, said Reto Stocker, Afghanistan head for the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC.

You mean, like, SPECIAL OPERATIONS SQUADS?

Often they don't know who to talk with to ensure the safety of their workers and the shifting security situation makes it too dangerous to risk going into many areas, he said.

"In a growing number in areas of the country, we are entering a new, rather murky period. We see that the proliferation of armed groups threatens the ability of humanitarian organizations to access those in need," Stocker told reporters in the capital, Kabul.

It is CALLED PROGRESS according to the Obama administration.

In the past, Red Cross workers were able to get out to areas where there had been clashes or violent incidents within days. Now, sometimes it takes weeks or months, he said.

"Access for the ICRC has, over the last 30 years never been as poor and difficult in Afghanistan," Stocker said....

Again, it is PROGRESS!

Also Wednesday, NATO said coalition and Afghan investigators have been sent to Helmand province to assess an incident in which coalition aircraft accidentally killed an Afghan civilian and wounded two children the day before. The aircraft was called in to support Afghan and coalition forces who came under fire Tuesday in Marjah district.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters struck at Afghan security forces yesterday, storming an army recruiting center in the north that sparked a daylong gun battle and ambushing a bus carrying army officers in the capital — the first major attack in Kabul since May.

Progress.

At least 13 Afghan security forces were killed in the two attacks, with the firefight at the recruiting center in the northern province of Kunduz ending only after the last militant detonated his suicide vest, police officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for both operations.

The violence in Kunduz, where security has deteriorated during the past two years, came a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited her country’s troops in the province.

“The purpose of her trip was to give morale to her soldiers. But today the successful attack is shaking the hearts of the occupation soldiers,’’ Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.

Most fighting in Afghanistan has been concentrated in the south. An internal review of President Obama’s year-old war strategy unveiled Thursday noted progress against Taliban momentum, particularly in southern areas that saw a surge of international troop levels.

Yes, THIS GOVERNMENT is NO LONGER to be believed on ANYTHING!

But the Taliban have been showing they can strike outside those areas.

Nor is the MOUTHPIECE AmeriKan MEDIA and its ENDLESS BUTS!

NATO said an international service member died in a bomb attack in the south yesterday, bringing the number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 690, according to an Associated Press count. Previously, the worst year of war was 2009, with 502 foreign troops killed.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan authorities said yesterday that they were investigating an overnight raid by NATO troops on a private security company that killed two Afghan guards. NATO said the operation was conducted following a threat against the US Embassy.

Is NATO at WAR with Afghanistan?

Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said the probe was looking into why international forces raided the compound of Tiger International, an Afghan private security company, killing two Afghan guards and wounding another two.

But NATO said the operation was conducted jointly with Afghan forces after “a credible threat to attack the US Embassy’’ was received. It said coalition forces coordinated with Afghan security forces and moved into an area where intelligence reports had located two vehicles thought to be loaded with explosives.

Bin of bullshit.

The coalition forces were fired on after they had announced their arrival, and they returned fire, killing two of the shooters, NATO’s statement said. Two others were wounded, it said, and 15 people were detained in the operation. Those detained were released after a senior Afghan Army official arrived and vouched for them, NATO said.

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